


this is how the world ends

by ravioli_jesus



Series: grey [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Force Ghost Ben Solo, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Gen, Jedi Code (Star Wars), Mentioned Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Planet Exegol (Star Wars), Post-Battle of Exegol, Post-Canon, Sith Code (Star Wars), Sith Eternal - Freeform, and they were co-generals, discussing the grey jedi without actually saying it's the grey jedi, dubious piloting, teaching the force from beyond the grave, we're bashing both codes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28578345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravioli_jesus/pseuds/ravioli_jesus
Summary: "not with a bang, but with a whimper"She breathes deep and exhales, pushing her senses out with her breath. There are hearts buried around her, Priyah realizes, still beating, still hopeful. The kyber on her waist sings in the Force. She sees her ship, a cold spot in the burning that surrounds it. What are the odds, she wonders. Someone must be on her side today.
Relationships: Ben Solo & Original Female Character(s), Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Poe Dameron & Finn
Series: grey [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093943





	this is how the world ends

She finds a ship. 

Priyah scours the wreckage of the Sith Eternal fleet, finding bodies and bodies and droids smashed to pieces and bodies of her friends. There are bodies being burnt in the wreckage of the destroyers. Priyah can still hear the screams. She sees one who is still alive.

She does not look back at the smoking body as she climbs away. 

She tries to listen to the pull of the Force around her, tugging her every which way in search of the ship. The ways of the force are mysterious, she knows. Only rarely do the threads lead to a viable prize. She picks up a thread and follows it to a man whose breath is shallow and grating, and swings her blade to put him out of his misery. She listens more closely and tunes out the cries of the weak hearts still beating under piles of metal and sparks. 

It is then that Priyah finds what she’s looking for - under a mountain of debris, hanging halfway from the dock of a burning star destroyer. Her ship, spaceworthy, if she can get to it, is waiting for her. She picks up the lingering sound of muffled laughter and grinds her jaw. Ben is laughing.

“Not funny,” she mutters, picking her way around the perimeter of the mess. “Not funny at all.”

Sometimes, Priyah wishes herself to be a stormtrooper. Now is one of those times. She was envious of them - raised for the front lines, their paths carefully planned out and chosen by their superiors. No thinking allowed. It sounds like paradise, being a mindless soldier with only one purpose. She wouldn’t have seven sabers on her belt, or the ghost of a legend following her around the graveyard of the Sith Eternal fleet. Priyah would be a number.

It wouldn’t be much different from how she felt as the Emperor’s… apprentice? Padawan? Ward?

A few standard years before, she’d heard rumors of a stormtrooper who had defected, rescuing a Resistance pilot along the way. The story of FN-2187 had always fascinated her - why would someone willingly give up the protection of such a powerful institution? More importantly, why? 

The sabers on her belt clank together as Priyah clears away the smaller pieces of junk. She could reasonably get onto the ship now, considering it’s half-inside a burning star destroyer, but the creaking metal surrounding Priyah and her ship leaves her on edge, with a fleeting feeling that if she stays on the destroyer, something will go wrong. 

She feels Ben’s eyes on the back of her head as she surveys the ground by the destroyer. The stone is riddled with holes and still-glowing metal, but those are swept away easily enough, with just a wave of Priyah’s hand. She stands in her little clearing and mentally prepares herself for the next task at hand: get that ship to solid ground. 

Ben’s hand is but a breeze on her arm. _Don’t overthink it._

_Not overthinking. Just… calculating._

Priyah, like all other force-sensitives before her, started her training by lifting rocks. An exercise so simple, shared by Jedi and Sith alike, but was infuriatingly difficult for her to grasp. She never had enough control over her intentions, always second-guessing and overcompensating. She would practice at night, taking her school texts and trying to stack them, so much that her mother had to watch her go to sleep, in hopes that Priyah would stop sleeping during lessons. 

“It’s just a rock,” Priyah mutters to herself, taking a wide stance. “A really, really big rock.”

She breathes deep and exhales, pushing her senses out with her breath. There are hearts buried around her, Priyah realizes, still beating, still hopeful. The kyber on her waist sings in the Force. She sees her ship, a cold spot in the burning that surrounds it. What are the odds, she wonders. Someone must be on her side today. 

The Force hums around her. _Concentrate._

Priyah sees her ship. She surrounds it, encasing it in the snap-crackle of her Force, grits her teeth, and tugs. Ever so slowly, her ship tilts towards her, screeching against the metal keeping it in the destroyer. She pulls a little harder, feeling resistance where things have snagged on exterior ports, and untangles them. She’s sweating, she realizes through a haze, beads running down her face, stinging her eyes. This is the best workout she’s had in a while.

Her limbs start to shake once her ship is clear of the destroyer hangar. Ben’s presence ghosts along her arm, and she draws from it, taking whatever he is offering. Inch by inch, the ship is lowered to the stone, and it takes every ounce of patience and control left in Priyah to not let the thing drop that last few feet. It settles on the stone, and Priyah sags in relief. She wipes the sweat from her brow and rubs her eyes, and she can see the Aurebesh painted on the side of the cruiser. Whisper, it says, and Priyah is satisfied. The danger is over. Ben retreats to watch from afar. 

She boards her ship. 

\---

“General, we have a proximity alert. Unknown cruiser just dropped out of hyperspace above us.” Kaydel Ko Connix frowns studiously at her monitor. “Cruiser, please identify yourself.”

Poe Dameron comes up behind her and awaits an answer from the ship. Unscheduled arrivals are common, but unknown ships are not. In the days following the Battle of Exegol and Rey’s pilgrimage to Tatooine, numbers around the Ajan Kloss base have steadily declined, but some of the civilian fleet have stayed, volunteering to do supply and surveillance runs. Ships are coming in and out all the time - that is not what’s bothering Poe. 

Nothing. “Cruiser, please identify yourself.”

Another moment of static, then- “Sorry! I’m learning on the go. This is the Whisper of the formal Sith Eternal fleet. I come in peace. I need to talk to Rey.”

Poe’s heart stops in his chest. “Sith?”

Connix is looking at him, waiting for his call. It’s times like these that Poe wishes Finn weren’t so busy with training all hours of the day. Poe could really use his friend’s intuition right now, or Rey’s magic Jedi powers to tell him that the Whisper is not hostile. 

“Ask their intention.”

Connix reopens the line. “Whisper, what is your business here?”

“Um,” there’s a pause and a scuffle on the other side of the mic. “Tell her that Ben sent me.”

Poe opens his mouth to object but is rudely interrupted by hurried footsteps arriving in the command center. Finn and Rey, slightly out of breath, are charging towards him. “Perfect timing.”

“Let her land,” says Rey, eyes narrowed. 

“Whisper, you are cleared for landing in dock 6A. You will meet the generals on the tarmac.”

“Copy.” 

Connix closes the line and looks dubiously at the baby Jedi. “You sure about this?”

Rey has the decency to not look offended. “She’s here for me with a message from Ben. I’m sure.”

“Now, hang on,” Poe objects. He will never disagree with his friend on who is trustworthy or not, but he was entrusted with the wellbeing of an entire army. “Is she safe?”

“I’ll get back to you on that.” Rey turns on her heels and walks out the door. Finn turns to follow, but Poe catches his arm to walk with him.

“He appeared to us, during meditation,” Finn says quietly. “Told Rey he was sending someone. Apparently, she used to study under Palpatine.”

Poe nodded. “She said she was part of the Sith Eternal. Any clue what that is?”

Finn shook his head. “Ask Rey, probably. Or ask her.”

Ajan Kloss’s sun is weak. It’s a new thing, only half a billion years old, and for being such a new planet, it’s atmosphere is surprisingly breathable to the humanoid population. The flora and fauna are thriving. It’s on the far edge of the hospitable zone in the system, which will keep it safe as the star continues to mature, but for now, even as the sun sets low in the sky, Poe doesn’t need to squint to see the cruiser landing on the tarmac. Business slows as people stop and stare, but Poe can’t find it in himself to care. It’s late, anyways, and people will be heading in soon. 

The engines are cut and the side hatch opens. 

Rey greets the young woman on the ground below the cruiser, and motions for Finn to join her. Poe hangs back with Connix, within eavesdropping distance but clearly excluding himself from the conversation. He just observes. 

She’s familiar to him, Poe realizes. It’s the way she holds herself - or maybe her black hair tied up in such a way that he knew he played with as a child. Curls escape the messy style, sleep-mussed, but Poe knows it. He knows her, if only he could put his finger on it-

She reaches into her bag and his breath catches. She can probably sense his trepidation because she scoffs. “Oh, come off it, General.”

“I didn’t-” Finn objects, before he realizes that she’s talking to the other one.

Poe joins the group, and she finds what she was looking for. “Poe Dameron.”

“I’m Priyah Novak,” she says, and holy shit, is that a lightsaber? “These were left on Exegol after you destroyed the fleet. Ben cut down his Knights and just left them.”

Poe doesn’t need to be Force-sensitive to sense how Priyah feels about that. There’s barely-concealed anger in her ebony eyes and she’s white-knuckling the saber hilt in her hand. Finn reaches out to grab the metal from her, and she flinches, before remembering herself and offering it to him. “Take it. I have more in here.”

“More?” Rey asks.

“There were seven Knights of Ren, including Kylo Ren. Six sabers left on Exegol. Ben told me to bring them to you.” Priyah took another hilt out and handed it to Rey. 

“Did you know them?” Finn asked.

“Not personally.” Priyah said, and she stopped. Poe could tell she was holding back (distrust is not a thing reserved for only one side) but he didn’t push for details.

“Let’s take this inside, too many ears out here,” Poe said, and Rey nodded. 

“I agree. Let’s see what we can do with the sabers you brought us.”

\---

Rey doesn’t know how to feel about Priyah. They are about the same age, but the strange girl before her is… unlike anything Rey’s ever seen. She’s angry. Rey doesn’t blame her. She can sense that some of the anger is blamed on her actions during the battle on Exegol and some of the anger is directed elsewhere, but it’s always there, simmering below her light brown skin. Rey imagines that it’s easy to rile her up. 

The sabers lay on the table of a commandeered conference room, glinting in the artificial light. Each hilt is different. Each one sings in the Force. Finn picks one up, a different hilt than the one he was handed earlier, and presses the button. A red blade lights his face. 

Priyah takes the last saber from her bag and ignites it. It’s red, like the others, and somehow, Rey is surprised. Somehow. Like the girl wasn’t from a Sith death cult.

“I made this about ten years ago,” she starts, her voice quiet. Rey strains to listen. “It was a gift. The Emperor gave it to me when it was brought to him by Master Snoke. It was green when I got it.

“The process of bleeding a crystal is simple; the Sith just needs to pour all their anger and hatred into it, channel it through their kyber. Like everything else about my training, it took weeks to figure out how to do it.” She pauses, looking at the six sabers on the table. “I think Ben wants me to teach you how to purify them.”

“How?” Finn asks, and for a moment, Rey wonders if she will need to separate the two. Priyah glowers at him. “Just wondering.”

“It will take time. The Emperor only taught me how to bleed kyber. Not purify. It’s not the Sith way.”

The air in the room thickens. Rey only follows the Jedi code, the one that Master Luke taught her years ago on Ahch-To, but she had read of the Sith and their tradition of passion to gain power. Priyah seems like she’s anticipating the question to come, about the code she was raised on, and Rey knows that she would defend it to her last breath. 

It’s all Priyah had ever known, right?

“We can continue this tomorrow,” Rey says, and she takes a small bit of pride in the way tension falls from Priyah’s frame. “General Dameron, it’s your call on what to do for Priyah’s living arrangements.”

Poe nods. “You guys gonna continue meditation?”

“No.” Rey takes the saber from Finn’s hands and sets it on the table. Ignoring Priyah’s eyes, Rey grabs Finn’s hand and tugs him out of the room.

The halls are bare, Rey notes, as she pulls Finn along to her quarters. He doesn’t say anything, only tightening his grip and keeping up with her pace. Rey knows he picked up on what Priyah was broadcasting (the girl didn’t seem interested in shielding her emotions) and she’s worried. Priyah has a great deal of anger in her, towards Rey and the Resistance, and weirdly enough, towards Finn. 

She pauses quickly to open the door to her bunk, and pushes Finn inside.

“Listen,” she says, and Finn sits on her bed, “there’s a few things you need to know.”

Rey cannot speak for other sentients in the galaxy; this much she makes clear, but she tries her best to explain the code Priyah spoke of and the cult she comes from. She tells Finn that Priyah is angry, and he tells her he picked up on it the minute she set foot on Ajan Kloss. 

The Sith Eternal, she explains, is a myth spread throughout the galaxy. There were rumors on Jakku, of extremists who believed the old emperor was still alive and building an army (a rumor that turned out to be true, in the end), but no one had ever encountered them. They mostly stuck to the unknown regions, she says. They were said to be made up of regular sentients, of engineers and soldiers and strategists left over from the Empire. 

She tells Finn of the Sith code.

He hangs off every word, of course. He’s just like that. Ever since waking up from his coma, Finn has absorbed every piece of information he comes across. He learns incredibly fast. 

“Why does she hate me?” He asks, and he’s not confused. He’s not upset. He just wants to learn.

Rey sighs. “I… I think she’s heard of you. She might be jealous? I don’t know.”

“Jealous of what?” Finn scoffs. “Me being a stormtrooper? Or escaping the First Order?”

“I don’t know, Finn.”

Finn leans back against the wall, dark eyes unfocused. “The Sith are encouraged to feel, but the Jedi were told not to.”

“Yeah.” Rey knows where he’s going with this, and it’s something she has wondered, too. “How is either side any better than the other?”

“No, not that.” Finn breathes deep. “‘Peace is a lie, there is only passion.’ There is nothing in the Sith code to say that they have to use anger to channel the Force.”

Oh.

Rey blinks, mouth dropping open. “Well- I mean, no? There isn’t? But for centuries, that’s what they have relied on.”

“I know that.”

“Are you trying to say that the Sith have been misinterpreting their own code?”

“I’m saying that both the codes have their faults. Both have their strengths. Why not combine them?”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3


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